ANDERS MAGE PAGE 2.0

Dorothy Symms

Dorothy Symms was a promising member of the Order of Hermes. She was devoted to linguistic research. Her initiation took place under a powerful conjunction between Mercury, the Sun and the Moon in Aquarius, making her mentors expect much from her. She fulfilled their expectations admirably, unearthing hereto unknown secrets about the structure of Language itself, and how this structure reflects reality around us. While some mages were a bit worried at her liberal use of psychological terms from the Technocracy and her quite radical theories about the nature of language, most hermetics were deeply impressed and tended to regard her more outré concepts as just youthful folly.

After writing her magnum opus "De Lingua Arcana", a well known tome about the magickal languages of humanity, she began to study nonhuman languages. At first she communicated with dolphins, dogs and cats, and later she began experimenting with insects. After becoming convinced that there existed some kind of underlying language common for all beings, she began to study Spirit with zeal. She started to travel into the Umbra, trying to communicate with the entities out there. On one of her expeditions she disappeared, and is generally considered dead.

She was actually contacted by something, a class of entities completely alien to normal reality. These entities take the form of strings of symbols or sentences. In effect, they are living language. To fulfil their potential, they must use intelligent minds. They reproduce by spreading themselves to other minds, but unlike ordinary beings their progeny isn't similar to themselves, at least not in any obvious way. It is hard to say if two different sentences are different entities or different representations of the same entity.

Dorothy's mind is filled with these entities, and she is only partially human today. When she talks she will often suddenly say complete nonsense, jumbled or meaningless words. The really spooky thing is that people who listens to her often themselves begin to talk like her as the entities enter their minds. Fortunately, the entities cannot survive for long outside a mind with the right environment for them, so this is temporary. Dorothy is their servant, vehicle and home. It is possible that she only behaves normally, that her mind has merged with the strange linguistic life that inhabits her. When she talks, it is a society of alien beings that speaks (she has started to use "we" instead of "I").

The entities' goals are inscrutable. Human standards are not applicable to these beings. They are too alien. To some extent, they seem to be interested in spreading themselves into more minds, but they also seems to just be curious about out world. They also seem to do certain very specific actions, which seem to have some purpose. All in all, they are frighteningly unpredictable.

The linguistic entities are constantly trying to spread from Dorothy's mind, perhaps involuntarily. When she speaks or writes nonsense, entities are trying to spread into other minds. A text written by her will contain encoded entities and when someone reads it the entities will enter his mind. The entities fortunately seem to require a very special type of mind to inhabit, since they cannot exist long in a normal mind. But Dorothy is doing her best to supply the entities with more suitable minds. If a person is subjected to the entities for a long time, they will start to modify its pathways and make it more hospitable. A knowledge of linguistics or expression seems to make entry much easier, so she has mainly tried to infect linguists and artists.

The entities seem to be bent on spreading far and wide. They appear to want to spread themselves using mass media, slowly reforming the minds of humanity into suitable homes. To this end, Dorothy is trying to spread them into advertisements, television scripts and by converting people involved with mass media.

The entities seem to be interested in different aspects of reality. They are fascinated by the idea of space. Dorothy and her Acolytes can spend hours just looking at and feeling an object, delighting in its shape and three-dimensionally. Dorothy tends to become awed by large things, and often spends much time looking at buildings. However, this awe is not apparently emotional, just an intense (sometimes dangerous) curiosity. The victim just wants to understand a spatial relationship, and can look at it from every conceivable angle. Interestingly enough, the entities find the mind of anyone with Correspondence abhorrent and refuse to inhabit it.

The entities sometimes seem to perform certain actions, as if they were part of a great plan or perhaps magickal ritual. Suddenly Dorothy will stand up and start to make complex gestures in silence. Her Acolytes will sometimes rush straight out to a certain place, stand there and wait. After a while they will walk back. Some Acolytes buy ordinary goods like toys, food or furniture, look them over, paint symbols on them and then put them at specific places or give them away. Perhaps this makes sense to the entities, who after all are living in a radically different universe than us.

Essence: Questing
Nature: Visionary
Demeanor: Caregiver
STR 1, DEX 2, STA 3
CHA 4, MAN 2, APP 2
PER 3, INT 5, WIT 2
Talents: Alertness 2, Awareness 3, Expression 3, Subterfuge 4
Skils: Firearms 3, Investigation 3, Research 4, Stealth 3, Survival 4
Knowledges: Computer 2, Cosmology 3, Enigmas 4, Linguistics 5, Occult 3
Backgrounds: Avatar 2, Library 4, Arcane 3, Destiny 2, Allies 4
Willpower 8, Arete 5
Spheres: Forces 4, Mind 5, Prime 2, Spirit4

Dorothy is a likable lady and generally spreads a feeling of security and happiness around her. Except for her weird speech and ideas, she would be the perfect grandmother. She has a tendency to start to enthusiastically talk about deep questions in linguistics, magick and philosophy while serving tea and biscuits, sometimes interrupted by sudden non sequiturs and nonsense.

Foci: Language (all Spheres): She seems to use meaningless syllables, but they are of course filled with entities (which may help her magick). She doesn't use the Seal very much anymore (due to high Arete).

Her countermagick against Mind is a bit special. All attempts to contact her mind will automatically succeed, but the other mage will be subjected to the entities and their magick directly. Is someone is trying to attack the entities inside her, both her countermagick and the entities' countermagick will resist it, making it extremely hard to influence them.

Quote: "Have you read about the deep-structure theory of language? If the proponents of nimiziddimiddi are right, there exist the same language-structures kokkallareb umutzin somewhere in the mind of all of us. These structures reflect, and are reflected in, the structure of reality around us. Sandbag in Andes order of heroes, fry fire get green. In effect, Prime flows along linguistic patterns. We think we have some evidence of this."

The Acolytes

Dorothy's Acolytes are all intelligent people with a background in linguistics, art, media or magick. They are on the surface quite normal, but sometimes tend to talk nonsense like Dorothy. They can be quite disturbing sometimes, as they suddenly start to babble incoherently. This has been a problem for several of them, but most of them can interact normally with society.

Dorothy and her Acolytes (or rather, the entities in their minds) keep in touch using phone, mail and e-mail. They also actively seek to spread the entities, often using subtle means. One Acolyte, a psychologist, is using entity-infested nonsense in his studies of memory, where participants try to learn meaningless information (and thus become infected). Another Acolyte, an artist, paints entities into his paintings.

The Acolytes like Dorothy and are quite controlled by the entities, but would not really die for her. At least their human parts would not sacrifice themselves, but the entities have somewhat different standards. An entity which has spread does not care whether a few copies are destroyed, as long as other copies remain. That may lead to the entities sacrificing the Acolytes or Dorothy in a crisis.

The Entities

The Entities do not have any physical or mental traits. They are not even beings in any sense, just information. They can, however, work magick when they are in contact with a linguistic system (generally a mind, but certain computer systems could be influenced). If anyone hears an entity as a sentence, read an encoded entity or thinks about it, it can make magickal effects against the mind of the victim. These effects are completely alien in nature and form. Most are felt as sudden weird thoughts and visions. They are generally in the form of weird hallucinations, utterly strange but hardly impossible. The effects are purely mental, and have no physical effect in any way. A mage with Mind will immediately realize that he is subjected to magick, but since the magick is from the "inside", countermagick is not possible (or rather, it is impossible to tell if it was successful).

A typical example is when someone reads a text written by Dorothy, he will suddenly glimpse a vision of the shape of grammar and believe the thought "Pyramids are handout into groan" for a moment. Afterwards, he will have flashbacks every time he sees airplanes. A mage will realize that some kind of mental magick or other strange effect has taken place, but will be unable to identify the source (since the magickal act was done by the interpretation of the entity inside his own mind.)

Note that if an entity is part of text, it will do almost the same thing when it is read again. Some entities seems to be created solely for the purpose of doing some magickal effects. Remember, it is practically impossible not to read a visible text!

Generally, the collective of entities in Dorothy's mind have an effective Arete 5 for countermagick. They have Mind 5. The entities in her Acolytes have Arete 4 and Mind 4. The transient entities of other people have Arete 1-2 and equal Mind.

Entity Rotes

These are not really rotes in the ordinary sense. The entities are the sentences and magick they perform. It's even open for discussion if they really do magick, or just play with the minds of their victims like ordinary sentences do on a smaller scale. Each time one of these rotes succeeds, the difficulty for that rote is lowered one step.

Suggestion (Mind 2)

The victim will be suggested to do something, either now or when triggered by some stimuli. Often these suggestions are quite weird and serve no apparent purpose (like yelling "Hehro fy!" each time the victim sees a cab, or trying to throw apples at a certain television show). This is used to condition the mind of the victim slightly to the presence of entities.

Hallucination (Mind 3)

The victim will see some kind of weird hallucination, often with synesthetic elements (the victim hears colors, see the taste of space or feels the shape of grammar). This is used by entities to modify the mind of the victim slightly, so that they will be able to exist in it longer.

Take Control (Mind 4)

The entity can take control of parts or the whole of the victim's mind, and start to control his thoughts and behavior. When an entity manages to do this, it will remain in control as long as the duration of the effect. After that time, the entity will dissolve since the mind of the victim is unsuitable. If it manages to get five successes, it is permanent.

Story Idea

One of the players (or a friend) sees an advertisement in a paper and becomes infested with entities. Tracking the infection backwards, they find an Acolyte who is busy spreading entities through the papers. From the Acolyte they can find out about Dorothy, and perhaps meet her. What to do with her is another question.

To complicate things further, the Technocracy may become interested in the case. The Syndicate will certainly note if some of their pawns start to talk nonsense, and want to stop further spread. The New World Order and Void Engineers would become interested in learning more about the entities, perhaps to use them for their own purposes.

Note that Dorothy hardly is the "servant of Nameless Things from the Outer Darkness" the players will expect. She is a nice lady, who serves tea and biscuits while her language is trying to take control over their minds.